I realize we’re all busy and this is silly, but suppose you are trying to figure out which boxer (or both?) broke Ali’s jaw: Ken Norton or Joe Frazier? And then you stumble upon this article which ostensibly will clear it up for you. I encourage you to take 3 minutes and quickly read the whole thing from top to bottom.

Now tell me: If you just had that article to rely on, what would you conclude? I submit that you would conclude, “Joe Frazier and Ken Norton both broke Ali’s jaw in the same fight. Joe Frazier must be the stage name for ‘Ken Norton’ just like Ali is really Cassius Clay.”

How well it does the job is still an open question, but this is exactly the problem that Ezra Klein’s new site vox.com is intended to solve. Their goal is to explain the news and give context rather than just write an update to the information the reader is already assumed to have about.

Okay. I like how he puts a sentence link “which already has the legal authority”

referring to the EPA that I was particularly interested in. The link doesn’t explain the linked sentence.

I’m not really referring in my comment on the shooting to stuff I was assumed to know, I think it is that the news assumes the thing that is really important doesn’t actually matter because they are pushing something, in the case of Vox it is apparently Obama’s agenda.

The Ali story seems to be missing (but of course I can’t really tell) “In the next fight,…” and “In the previous fight,…” and I think those two prepositional phrases would take the story from utterly baffling to just fine.

But here goes. I’m guessing the jaw was broken in the Frazier fight, didn’t get treated until after the Norton fight. It was in the Norton fight that the already broken jaw was separated to the point of requiring surgery after the fight.

There is no record of Frazier breaking Ali’s jaw in 1971 or at any time. Likewise, there is no record of anyone ever breaking Ali’s jaw other than Norton in 1973.

One guess as to the source of confusion may be that in the 1971 Frazier fight, Ali did apparently take a hook to the jaw that resulted in severe swelling. But this is stretching for an explanation, really — there’s not really even any indication that there has ever been widespread rumors that Ali’s jaw was actually broken in the first fight.

“The compliment was heartfelt but not enough to assuage the more simple Frazier’s hurt at all Ali’s promotional insults down the years, which now included calling him ‘The Gorilla’ in the Thrilla in Manila.”

This is a NYT story from 1971 about the Frazier fight. It forms the main structure of the text from Bob’s link.

However, in Bob’s link it has been edited as well as added to. Most critically here:

The original story: “Suddenly, he departed for Flower Fifth Avenue Hospital for X-rays of his severely swollen jaw. He was released from the hospital after 40 minutes and left unbandaged.”

Bob’s link: “He and his camp then suddenly departed for Flower Fifth Avenue Hospital. X-rays of his severely swollen jaw would eventually show Ali’s jawbones were separated by a quarter of an inch. However, at the time, Ali was actually released from the hospital after 40 minutes and left without any bandages.”

This is a stretch, but depending on the angle at which the xray is taken (even with a pano such as this) an angular break can appear as hairline. Pooling of blood within the broken vessels in the bone led to the swellimg. Yes, an athlete could fight through the pain … for a while.

Looking at the video, there are numerous forces that could separate the crack later (especially from blows to the contralateral side) and result in the half centimeter separation. His right was severlely compromised to begin with, having been edentulous and having resultant severe loss of bone height in that region. The break is in the ascending ramus and that is no 40 minute wiring job, so it must have gone undetectable on the initial radiograph (wherever they/it may be).